DECEMBER

16,

1937

FLIGHT.

595

KEEPING US ON THE MAP : The dearth of truly modern British commercial aircraft types is met to no unimportant extent by the introduction of the Percival Q4 and Q6 twin-engined monoplanes, described in this issue. Apart from being attractive propositions for the private owner the newcomers should be useful for charter and feeder work. This attractive view shows the prototype Q6 (Gipsy Six lis), with fixed undercarriage, flying near Luton Aerodrome the other day. (Flight photograph) to the temporary base. Capella took an hour and a hall to do it, but she arrived safely and under her own power. A landplane in similar circumstances might have made a blind landing on the home aerodrome, or it might have been compelled to go and land elsewhere. It may, of course, be argued, that if there was a delay of one and a half hours, it matters little whether that was spent by the passengers in reaching their destination by an alternative route or by taxying instead of flying the last few miles. One can, however, imagine conditions when it might matter quite a good deal. For instance, if friends or relatives are waiting at one aerodrome to receive arriving travellers, it is annoying, to say the least, for them to have to go back to London or, alternatively to rush off to an aerodrome in a different part of the country. Also, from the operating company's point of view, it is undesirable to have one of the machines fogbound at a distant aerodrome, where there may be delays in inspecting and overhauling it for its next trip pilot. He is able to give his full attention to observing, whether spotting for the guns or general reconnaissance, and he sends the wireless messages, makes notes, and, if necessary, takes photographs. But it is considered quite essential that his attention must not be distracted by thoughts of attack from behind. Therefore, the man in the back seat is a gunner, pure and simple, whose whole job is to keep a look-out to the rear. Not until the rear gun opens fire does the pilot need to turn his thoughts from observation to air combat.

Some Problems

French Army Cooperation

HE French Air Minister, M. Cot, in the debate on the Air Estimates in the Chamber of Deputies, said that the creation of an air arm for the artillery was under consideration. If it were formed, the observers would be officers of the Army. This suggestion shows the difference between French practice and our own in a matter of important detail. The French method is the one used by all the belligerents (including ourselves) during the Great W a r ; the crew of an army co-operation machine consisted of a pilot and an observer-gunner. I t was the latter who observed the fall of the shells and sent wireless corrections to the battery. Our Royal Air Force has now radically altered that system, and the crew consists of a pilot-observer and a gunner. The reason for the British arrangement is that the actual piloting of an aeroplane engaged on reconnaissance is so a utomatic that it makes no demand on the energies of the

COT is reported to have said that the observers in the artillery aeroplanes would be officers of the Army. This would seem on a par with the system which has prevailed for some years past in our Fleet Air Arm, whereby all the observers were naval officers. Actually, British experience has gone to show that for Army work it does not much matter to which Service the pilotobserver belongs provided that he is very thoroughly trained in his task. The course of training at the School of Army Co-operation at Old Sarum is very thorough indeed, and the pilots (a few of whom are seconded from the Army, but most of whom belong to the R.A.F.) become experts at their task. The only weak points in the British system are (a) that the R.A.F. officers who have become specialists at army co-operation are liable to be transferred to other classes of squadrons, and (b) that a certain amount of dual responsibility and divided allegiance are inevitable. The Army authorities can neither directly reward good work nor punish bad work done for the Army. In the French system, as suggested by M. Cot, the difficulty will arise of having two officers from different Services working in the same machine. If the two do not work in complete harmony, awkward questions of seniority and authority may provide problems not easy of solution.